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Stuffing for the Fish

A stuffing fish made with butter, cracker crumbs, onion juice, capers, parsley, sea salt, pepper, dripping, onion, bread crumbs, milk, lemon juice, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stuffing for the Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Rub the butter into the cracker crumbs.

  2. Wet the mixture with onion juice.

  3. Mix in the minced capers, parsley, salt, and pepper.

Cook and finish

  1. In a frying pan, heat the dripping and cook the minced onion until soft.

  2. Wet the bread crumbs with hot milk and stir into the frying pan.

  3. Season with pepper, salt, and lemon juice, and beat to a mush.

  4. Remove from heat and whip in the egg yolk.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cracker crumbs
Form the bulk of the stuffing and absorb liquid to give body.
Bread crumbs
Absorb hot milk and soften into a binding mush that holds the stuffing together.
Raw egg yolk
Binds the mixture and enriches it, setting slightly as it is stirred in.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the crumbs for a softer texture.
Dripping
Adds savoury meat fat for flavour when cooking the onion.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and moisture once softened in the fat.

The step that matters

Whip in the egg yolk off the heat. Egg yolk sets when it gets hot, so adding it over direct heat can scramble it into lumps. Removing the pan from the heat first lets it blend smoothly and bind the mixture without curdling.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, parsley, pepper, pork, bread, milk):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, parsley, pepper, pork, bread, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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